FCI Constructors Attack on the “Low – Low”
Post Date: April 21, 2009 at 12:00 am
Reported From: APE Western (CA)
Reported From: APE Western (CA)
FCI Constructors of California is in the process of the seismic retrofit of NHD Bridge in Sandiego, CA. The project consists of widening existing pier footings and constructing pier infill walls. The footing widenings consist of installing a total of 180 CISS Concrete piles. Due to the low vertical clearance of 20 feet, pile installation required the use of hydraulic impact hammers of low operating lengths. This is why we chose APE! The APE models 7.5 & the APE model 9.5 hydraulic impact hammers with operating lengths of 7.5 ft and 9.5 ft are used to install piles with 9′ and 6′ sections, depending on which hammer was in use, and welded to total lengths varying from 56 ft to 70ft. After piles were installed, precast waste slabs were set in place on kip brackets welded to the pile casings, to support pier footing construction. “This project was all done off of flexi floats in the water and we had very little space to work with. Using the APE hammers, working off of excavators, we were able to accomplish the task and thanks to APE we are able to drive pile in the toughest situations!”
APE China produces it’s first 200 and sells it in 4 days.
Just 4 days after manufacturing the first model 200 vibratory hammer in China it was sold to a private contractor in ShanDong. The hammer was recently shipped and used to drive 3 feet diameter batter piles 55 feet deep off the coast of TianJin for an oil platform. This was a huge step for APE China and we are all very happy that the hammer was used successfully. The success of this job has already been heard by many other people who are interested in APE products manufactured in China. This was a big team effort with much the help coming from Jerry Cors who had a crucial part in the assembly of the power unit and vibro, Steve Gough who sold the hammer, and Mr. Zhou who is our manufacturing partner in China. Our new employee Mr. Yang has also helped with many things from hands on wrench turning to translation of the manual.
